The 2020 Democratic Party platform described Donald Trump’s proposal to build new nuclear weapons as “unnecessary, wasteful, and indefensible”—criticizing Trump for his “reckless embrace of a new arms race.” The party’s 2024 platform, however, praised Joe Biden’s administration for “modernizing each leg of our nuclear triad, updating our command, control, and communication systems, and investing in our nuclear enterprise.” Which wasn’t mere talk. Biden’s 2025 budget requested US$49 billion for nuclear modernization and $62 billion for nuclear weapons overall.

The general budget for the U.S. Department of Defense has also grown rapidly in recent years. Now, it’s more than $850 billion annually—or nearly 1 trillion if you count all military-related spending. And it seems the trend is set to continue. The speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, Mike Johnson, promised earlier this year that Republicans will cut federal spending overall, better to “prioritize the truly essential needs of our nation—and our national security has to be at the top of that list.”

Meanwhile, leaders in both parties have shifted in how they think about the role of national security in the economy. In a high-profile presentation in September, National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan outlined his vision of how national security will be key to America’s future economic strategy. And earlier this year, the Pentagon released its first-ever “National Defense Industrial Strategy,” which calls for strengthening America’s industrial base in order to strengthen America’s military might. What’s driving all this?

Adam Tooze is a professor of history and the director of the European Institute at Columbia University. Tooze says the main force behind it is the United States’ evolving great-power rivalries with China and, to a lesser extent, Russia. Which aren’t just increasing military budgets; they’re transforming the way American leaders think about how these conflicts could play out—including with the use of nuclear weapons …

Gustav Jönsson: What exactly is happening here?

Hennie Stander

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